GREAT EXPECTATIONS AND SOME ACCOUNT OF AN EXTRAORDINARY TRAVELLER Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 http://www.archive.org/details/greatexpectation04dick Taking Leave of Joe CLE ART yp E EDITION THE WORKS OF CHARLES DICKENS WITH ILLUSTRATIONS GREAT EXPECTATIONS BOOKS, INC. NEW YORK BOSTON ^Great Expectations^ was first issued in three volumes in j86i ^ after having appeared as a serial in 'All the Year Round' from December /, 1860^ to August j^ 1861. This Edition contains all the copyright emendations made tn the lext as revised by the Author in i86j and 1 868 TYPESET, NICKELTYPED. PRINTED. AND BOUND IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE COLONIAL PRESS INC.. CLINTON. MASS. AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED TO CHAUNCY HARE TOWNSHEND 1 ILLUSTRATIONS Great Expectations TAKING LEAVE OF JOE ..... Frontispiece facing page 54 no 176 354 410 PIP WAITS ON MISS HAVISHAM . OLD ORLICK AMONG THE CINDERS LECTURING ON CAPITAL . A RUBBER AT MISS HAVISHAM*S **DON*T GO home'' .... ON THE MARSHES BY THE LIMEKILN GREAT EXPECTATIONS Cjireat lixpecttafioiis CHAPTER I MY father's family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called my- self Pip, and came to be called Pip. I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister — Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long be- fore the days of photographs) , my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, ^Also Georgiana Wife of the Above,* I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside Jieir grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine — who gave up trying to get a living exceedingly early in that universal struggle — I am indebted for a belief religiously en- tertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence. Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and 2 GREAT EXPECTATIONS broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain, that this bleak place over- grown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river ; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of all and beginning to cry, was Pip. 'Hold your noise!' cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. 'Keep stilly you little devil, or I'll cut your throat!' A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin. 'O! Don't cut my throat, sir,' I pleaded in terror. Tray don*t do it, sir.' 'Tell us your name!' said the man. 'Quick!' Tip, sir.' *Once more,' said the man, staring at me. 'Give it mouth!' Tip, Pip, sir.' 'Show us where you live,' said the man. Tint out the place!' I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat inshore among the alder-trees and pollards, a mile or more from the church. The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down, and emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece of bread. When the church came to itself — for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go head over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my feet — when the church came to GREAT EXPECTATIONS 3 itself, I say, I was seated on a high tombstone, trembling, while he ate the bread ravenously. 'You young dog,' said the man, licking his lips, 'what fal cheeks you ha' got.' I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized^ for my years, and not strong. 'Darn Me if I couldn't eat 'em,' said the man, with a threaten- ing shake of his head, 'and if I han't half a mind to 't! ' I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn't, and held tighter to the tombstone on which he had put me; partly, to keep myself upon it; partly, to keep myself from crying. 'Now lookee here!' said the man. 'Where's your mother?' 'There, sir!' said I. He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his shoulder. 'There, sir!' I timidly explained. 'Also Georgiana. That's my mother.' 'Oh!' said he, coming back. 'And is that your father alonger your mother?' 'Yes, sir,' said I; 'him too; late of this parish.' 'Ha!' he muttered then, considering. 'Who d'ye live with — supposin' you're kindly let to live, which I han't made up my mind about?' 'My sister, sir — Mrs. Joe Gargery — wife of Joe Gargery, the blacksmith, sir.' 'Blacksmith, eh?' said he. And looked down at his leg. After darkly looking at his leg and at me several times, he eame closer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as far as he could hold me; so that his eyes looked most powerfully down into mine, and mine looked most helplessly up into his. 'Now lookee here,' he said, 'the question being whether you're to be let to live. You know what a file is?' 'Yes, sir.' 'And you know what wittles is?' 'Yes, sir.' After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to give me a greater sense of helplessness and danger. 4 GREAT EXPECTATIONS 'You get me a file.' He tilted me again. 'And you get me wit- ties.' He tilted me again. 'You bring 'em both to me.' He tilted me again. 'Or I'll have your heart and liver out.' He tilted me again. I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him with both hands, and said, 'If you would kindly please to let me keep upright, sir, perhaps I shouldn't be sick, and perhaps I could attend more.' He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church jumped over its own weather-cock. Then, he held me by the arms in an upright position on the top of the stone, and went on in these fearful terms: 'You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and them wittles. You bring the lot to me, at that old Battery over yonder. You do it, and you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign concerning your having seen such a person as me, or any person sumever, and you shall be let to live. You fail, or you go from my words in any partickler, no matter how small it is, and your heart and your liver shall be tore out, roasted and ate. Now, I ain't alone, as you may think I am. There's a young man hid with me, in comparison with which young man I am a Angel. That young man hears the words I speak. That young man has a secret way pecooliar to himself, of getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his liver. It is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from that young man. A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself up, may draw the clothes over his head, may think himself comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear him open. I am keeping that young man from harming of you at the present moment, with great difficulty. I find it wery hard to hold that young man off of your inside. Now, what do you say?' I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what broken bits of food I could, and I would come to him at the Battery, early in the morning. 'Say, Lord strike you dead if you don't! ' said the man. I said so, and he took me down. 'Now/ he pursued, 'you remember what you've undertook, and you remember that young man, and you get home!' GREAT EXPECTATIONS 5 *Goo-good-night, sir/ I faltered. 'Much of that I' said he, glancing about him over the cold wet fiat, 'I wish I was a frog. Or a eel!' At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his arms — clasping himself, as if to hold himself together — and limped towards the low church wall. As I saw him go, picking his way among the nettles, and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he looked in my young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in. When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, like a man whose legs were numbed and stiff, and then turned round to look for me. When I saw him turning, I set my face towards home, and made the best use of my legs. But presently I looked over my shoulder, and saw him going on again towards the river, still hugging himself in both arms, and picking his way with his sore feet among the great stones dropped into the marshes here and there, for stepping-places when the rains were heavy, or the tide was in. The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, as I stopped to look after him; and the river was just another horizon- tal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so black; and the sky was just a row of long angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed. On the edge of the river I could faintly make out the only two black things in all the prospect that seemed to be standing upright; one of these was the beacon by which the sailors steered — like an unhooped cask upon a pole — an ugly thing when you were near it; the other a gibbet, with some chains hanging to it which had once held a pirate. The man was limping on towards this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life, and come down, and going back to hook himself up again. It gave me a terrible turn when I thought so; and as I saw the cattle lifting their heads to gaze after him, I wondered whether they thought so too. I looked all round for the horrible young man, and could see no signs of him. But now I was frightened again, and ran home without stopping. GREAT EXPECTATIONS CHAPTER II My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than I, and had estabhshed a great reputation with herself and the neighbours because she had brought me up 'by hand.' Having at that time to find out for myself what the expression meant, and knowing her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it upon her husband as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up by hand. She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I had a general impression that she must have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand. Joe was a fair m.an, with curls of flaxen hair on each side of his smooth face, and with eyes of such a very undecided blue that they seemed to have somehow got mixed with their own whites. He was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear fellow — a sort of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness. My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a pre- vailing redness of skin, that I sometimes used to wonder whether it was possible she washed herself with a nutmeg-grater instead of soap. She was tall and bony, and almost always wore a coarse apron, fastened over her figure behind with two loops, and having a square impregnable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and needles. She made it a powerful merit in herself, and a strong re- proach against Joe that she wore this apron so much. Though I really see no reason why she should have worn it at all; or why, if she did wear it at all, she should not have taken it off every day of her life. Joe's forge adjoined our house, which was a wooden house, as many of the dwellings in our country were — most of them, at that time. When I ran home from the churchyard, the forge was shut up, and Joe was sitting alone in the kitchen. Joe and I being fellow-sufferers, and having confidences as such, Joe imparted a confidence to me, the moment I raised the latch of the door and peeped in at him opposite to it, sitting in the chimney corner. GREAT EXPECTATIONS 7 'Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, looking for you, Pip. And she's out now, making it a baker's dozen.' 'Is she?' 'Yes, Pip,' said Joe; 'and what's worse, she's got Tickler with her.' At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on my waistcoat round and round, and looked in great depression at the fire. Tickler was a wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by col- lision with my tickled frame. 'She sot down,' said Joe, 'and she got up, and she made a grab at Tickler, and she Ram-paged out. That's what she did,' said Joe, slowly clearing the fire between the lower bars with the poker, and looking at it: 'she Ram-paged out, Pip.' 'Has she been gone long, Joe?' I always treated him as a larger species of child, and as no more than my equal. 'Well,' said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock, 'she's been on the Ram-page, this last spell, about five minutes, Pip. She's a-com- ing! Get behind the door, old chap, and have the jack-towel be- twixt you.' I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the door wide open, and finding an obstruction behind it, immediately divined the cause, and applied Tickler to its further investigation. She concluded by throwing me — I often served as a connubial missile — at Joe, who, glad to get hold of me on any terms, passed me on into the chimney and quietly fenced me up there with his great leg. 'Where have you been, you young monkey?' said Mrs. Joe, stamping her foot. 'Tell me directly what you've been doing to wear me away with fret and fright and worrit, or I'd have you out of that corner if you was fifty Pips, and he was five hundred Gargerys.' 'I have only been to the churchyard,' said I, from my stool, cry- ing and rubbing myself. 'Churchyard!' repeated my sister. 'If it warn't for me you'd have been to the churchyard long ago, and stayed there. Who brought you up by hand?' 'You did,' said I. 'And why did I do it, I should like to know?' exclaimed my sister. 8 GREAT EXPECTATIONS I whimpered, 'I don't know.' 7 don't!' said my sister. 'I'd never do it again! I know that. I may truly say I've never had this apron of mine off, since born you were. It's bad enough to be a blacksmith's wife (and him a Gargery), without being your mother.' My thoughts strayed from that question as I looked disconsol- ately at the fire. For, the fugitive out on the marshes with the ironed leg, the mysterious young man, the file, the food, and the dreadful pledge I was under to commit a larceny on those shelter- ing premises, rose before me in the avenging coals. 'Hah!' said Mrs. Joe, restoring Tickler to his station. 'Church- yard, indeed! You may well say churchyard, you two.' One of us, by the bye, had not said it at all. 'You'll drive me to the churchyard betwixt you, one of these days, and oh, a pr-r-recious pair you'd be without me!' As she applied herself to set the tea-things, Joe peeped down at me over his leg, as if he were mentally casting me and himself up, and calculating what kind of pair we practically should make, under the grievous circumstances foreshadowed. After that, he sat feeling his right-side flaxen curls and whisker, and following Mrs. Joe about with his blue eyes, as his manner always was at squally times. My sister had a trenchant way of cutting our bread-and-butter for us, that never varied. First, with her left hand she jammed the loaf hard and fast against her bib — where it sometimes got a pin into it, and sometimes a needle, which we afterwards got Into our mouths. Then she took some butter (not too much) on a knife and spread it on the loaf, in an apothecary kind of way, as if she were making a plaister — using both sides of the knife with a slapping dexterity, and trimming and moulding the butter off round the crust. Then, she gave the knife a final smart wipe on the edge of the plaister, and then sawed a very thick round off the loaf: which she finally, before separating from the loaf, hewed into two halves, of which Joe got one, an I the other. On the present occasion, though I was hungry, I dared not eat my slice. I felt that I must have something in reserve for my dread- ful acquaintance, and his ally the still more dreadful young man. I knew Mrs. Joe's housekeeping to be of the strictest kind, and that GREAT EXPECTATIONS 9 my larcenous researches might find nothing available in the safe. Therefore I resolved to put my hunk of bread-and-butter down the leg of my trousers. The effort of resolution necessary to the achievement of this purpose, I found to be quite awful. It was as if I had to make up my mind to leap from the top of a high house, or plunge into a great depth of water. And it was made the more difficult by the unconscious Joe. In our already-mentioned free-masonry as fel- low-sufferers, and in his good-natured companionship with me, it was our evening habit to compare the way we bit through our slices, by silently holding them up to each other's admiration now and then — which stimulated us to new exertions. To-night, Joe several times invited me, by the display of his fast-diminishing slice, to enter upon our usual friendly competition; but he found me, each time, with my yellow mug of tea on one knee, and my untouched bread-and-butter on the other. At last, I desperately considered that the thing I contemplated must be done, and that it had best be done in the least improbable manner consistent with the circumstances. I took advantage of a moment when Joe had just looked at me, and got my bread-and-butter down my leg. Joe was evidently made uncomfortable by what he supposed to be my loss of appetite, and took a thoughtful bite out of his slice, which he didn't seem to enjoy. He turned it about in his mouth much longer than usual, pondering over it a good deal, and after all gulped it down like a pill. He was about to take another bite, and had just got his head on one side for a good purchase on it, when his eye fell on me, and he saw that my bread-and-butter was gone. The wonder and consternation with which Joe stopped on the threshold of his bite and stared at me, were too evident to escape my sister's observation. 'What's the matter now?' said she, smartly, as she put down her cup. 'I say, you know!' muttered Joe, shaking his head at me in a very serious remonstrance. Tip, old chap! You'll do yourself a mischief. It'll stick somewhere. You can't have chawed it, Pip.' 'What's the matter now?' repeated my sister, more sharply than before. 10 GREAT EXPECTATIONS •If you can cough a trifle on it up, Pip, I'd recommend you to do it,' said Joe, all aghast. 'Manners is manners, but still your elth's your elth.' By this time, my sister was quite desperate, so she pounced on Joe, and, taking him by the two whiskers, knocked his head for a little while against the wall behind him: while I sat in the corner, looking guiltily on. 'Now, perhaps you'll mention what's the matter,' said my sister, out of breath, 'you staring great stuck pig.' Joe looked at her in a helpless way; then took a helpless bite, and looked at me again. 'You know, Pip,' said Joe, solemnly, with his last bite in his cheek, and speaking in a confidential voice, as if we two were quite alone, 'you and me is always friends, and I'd be the last to tell upon you, any time. But such a — ' he moved his chair, and looked about the floor between us, and then again at me — 'such a most uncommon bolt as that!' 'Been bolting his food, has he?' cried my sister. 'You know, old chap,' said Joe, looking at me, and not at Mrs. Joe, with his bite still in his cheek, 'I Bolted, myself, when I was your age — frequent — and as a boy, I've been among a many Bol- ters; but I never see your bolting equal yet, Pip, and it's a mercy you ain't Bolted dead.' My sister made a dive at me, and fished me up by the hair: say- ing nothing more than the awful words, 'You come along and be dosed.' Some medical beast had revived Tar-water in those days as a fine medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it in the cup- board ; having a belief in its virtues correspondent to its nastiness. At the best of times, so much of this elixir was administered to me as a choice restorative, that I was conscious of going about, smelling like a new fence. On this particular evening, the urgency of my case demanded a pint of this mixture, which was poured down my throat, for my greater comfort, while Mrs. Joe held my head under her arm, as a boot would be held in a boot-jack. Joe got off with half a pint; but was made to swallow that (much to his disturbance, as he sat slowly munching and meditating be- fore the fire), 'because he had had a turn.' Judging from myself. GREAT EXPECTATIONS 11 I should say he certainly had a turn afterwards, if he had none before. Conscience is a dreadful thing when it accuses man or boy; but when, in the case of a boy, that secret burden co-operates with another secret burden down the leg of his trousers, it is (as I can testify) a great punishment. The guilty knowledge that I was go- ing to rob Mrs. Joe — I never thought I was going to rob Joe, for I never thought of any cf the housekeeping property as his — united to the necessity of always keeping one hand on my bread-and-butter as I sat, or when I was ordered about the kitchen on any small errand, almost drove me out of my mind. Then, as the marsh winds made the fire glow and flare, I thought I heard the voice outside, of the man with the iron on his leg who had sworn me to secrecy, declaring that he couldn't and wouldn't starve until to- morrow, but must be fed now. At other times, I thought, What if the young man who was with so much difficulty restrained from imbruing his hands in me, should yield to a constitutional im- patience, or should mistake the time, and should think himself accredited to my heart and liver to-night, instead of to-morrow! If ever anybody's hair stood on end with terror, mine must have done so then. But, perhaps, nobody's ever did? It was Christmas Eve, and I had to stir the pudding for next day, with a copper-stick, from seven to eight by the Dutch clock. I tried it with the load upon my leg (and that made me think afresh of the man with the load on his leg) , and found the tendency of ex- ercise to bring the bread-and-butter out at m.y ankle, quite unman- ageable. Happily I slipped away, and deposited that part of m}' conscience in my garret bedroom. 'Hark!' said I, when I had done my stirring, and was taking a final warm in the chimney-corner before being sent up to bed; 'was that great guns, Joe?^ 'Ah!' said Joe. 'There's another conwict off.* 'What does that mean, Joe?' said I. Mrs. Joe, who always took explanations upon herself, said snap- pishly, 'Escaped. Escaped.' Administering the definition like Tar-water. While Mrs. Joe sat with her head bending over her needlework, I put my mouth into the forms of sa3ang to Joe, 'What's a con- 12 GREAT EXPECTATIONS vict?' Joe put his mouth into the forms of returning such a highly elaborate answer, that I could make out nothing of it but the single word, Tip.' 'There was a conwict off last night/ said Joe, aloud, 'after sun- set-gun. And they fired warning of him. And now it appears.; they're firing warning of another.' W^11,' said Joe, with the same appearance of profound cogita- tion, 'he is not — no, not to deceive you, he is not — my nevvy.' 'What the Blue Blazes is he?' asked the stranger. Which ap- peared to me to be an inquiry of unnecessary strength. Mr. Wopsle struck in upon that; as one who knew all about re- lationships, having professional occasion to bear in mind what female relations a man might not marry; and expounded the ties GREAT EXPECTATIONS 73 between me and Joe. Having his hand in, Mr. Wopsle finished off with a most terrifically snarling passage from Richard the Third. and seemed to think he had done quite enough to account for it when he added, — 'as the poet says.' And here I may remark that when Mr. Wopsle referred to me, he considered it a necessary part of such reference to rumple my hair and poke it into my eyes. I cannot conceive why everybody of his standing who visited at our house should always have put me through the same inflammatory process under similar circum- stances. Yet I do not call to mind that I was ever in my earlier youth the subject of remark in our social family circle, but some large- handed person took some such ophthalmic steps to patronise me. All this while, the strange man looked at nobody but me, and looked at me as if he were determined to have a shot at me at last, and bring me down. But he said nothing after offering his Blue Blazes observation, until the glasses of rum-and-water were brought: and then he made his shot, and a moo^t extraordinary shot it was. It was not a verbal remark, but a proceeding in dumb show, and was pointedly addressed to me. He stirred his rum-and-water pointedly at me, and he tasted his rum-and-water point e^^ly at me. And he stirred it and he tasted it: not with a spoor that was brought to him, but with a file. He did this so that nobody but I saw the file ; and when he had done it, he wiped the file and put it in a breast-pocket. I )^new it to be Joe's file, and I knew that he knew my convict, the rroment I saw the instrument. I sat gazing at him, spell-bound. B\^t he now reclined on his settle, taking very Httle notice of me, -dnd talking principally about turnips. There was a delicious sense of cleaning-up and making a qviet pause before going on in life afresh, in our village on Saturdi^y nights, which stimulated Joe to dare to stay out half an hour longer on Saturdays than at other times. The half-hour and the rum-and- water running out together, Joe got up to go, and took me by the hand. 'Stop half a moment, Mr. Gargery,' said the strange man. 'I think I've got a bright new shilling somewhere in my pocket, and if I have, the boy shall have it.' 74. GREAl EXPECTATIONS He looked it out from d nandful of small change, folded it in some crumpled paper, and gave it to me. 'Yours!' said he. 'Mind! Your own.' I thanked him, staring at iiim far beyond the bounds of good manners, and holding tight to Joe. He gave Joe good-night, and he gave Mr. Wopsle good-night (who went out with us), and he gave me only a look with his aiming eye — no, not a look, for he shut it up, but wonders may be done with an eye by hiding it. On the way home, if I had been in a humor for talking, the talk must have been all on my side, for Mr, Wopsle parted from us at the door of the Jolly Bargemen, and Joe went all the way home with his mouth wide open, to rinse the rum out with as much air as possible. But I was in a mannei stupified by this turning up of my old misdeed and old acquaintance, and could think of nothing else. My sister was not in a very bad temper when we presented our- selves in the kitchen, and Joe was encouraged by that unusual cir- cumstance to tell her about the bright shilling. 'A bad un, Fl] be bound,' said Mrs. Joe, triumphantly, 'or he wouldn't have given it to the boy? Let's look at it.' I took it out of the paper, and it proved to be a good one. 'But what's this?' said Mrs. Joe, throwing down the shilling and catch- ing up the paper. Two One-Pound notes?' Nothing less than two fat sweltering one-pound notes that seemed to have been on terms of the warmest intimacy with all the cattle markets in the country. Joe caught up his hat again, and ran with them to the Jolly Bargemen to restore them to their owner. While he was gone I sat down on my usual stool and looked vacant- ly at my sister, feeing pretty sure that the man would not be there. Presently, Joe came back, saying that the man was gone, but that he, Joe, had left word at the Three Jolly Bargemen concerning the notes. Then my sister sealed them up in a piece of paper, and put them under some dried rose-leaves in an ornamental teapot on the top of a press in the state parlour. There they remained a night- mare to me many and many a night and day. I had sadly broken sleep when I got to bed, through thinking ol the strange man taking aim at me with his invisible gun, and of the guiltily coarse and common thing it was, to be on secret terms GREAT EXPECTATIONS 75 of conspiracy with convicts — a feature in my low career that I had previously forgotten. I was haunted by the file too. A dread pos- sessed me that when I least expected it, the file would reappear. I coaxed myself to sleep by thinking of Miss Havisham's next Wednesday; and in my sleep I saw the file coming at me out of a door, without seeing who held it, and I screamed myself awake. CHAPTER XI At the appointed time I returned to Miss Havisham's and my hes- itating ring at the gate brought out Estella. She ocked it after admitting me, as she had done before, and again preceded me into the dark passage where her candle stood. She took nc notice of me until she had the candle in her hand, when she looked over her shoulder, superciliously saying, 'You are to come this vvay to-day,' and took me to quite another part of the house. The passage was a long one, and seemed to pervade the whole square basement of the Manor House. We traversed but one side of the square, however, and at the end of it she stopped and put her candle down and opened a door. Here the daylight reappeared, and I found myself in a small paved court-yard, the opposite side of which was formed by a detached dwelling-house, that looked as if it had once belonged to the manager or head clerk of the extinct brewery. There was a clock in the outer wall of this house. Like the clock in Miss Havisham's room, and like Miss Havisham's watch, it had stopped at twenty minutes to nine. We went in at the door, which stood open, and into a gloomy room with a low ceiling, on the ground floor at the back. There was some company in the room, and Estella said to me as she joined it, 'You are to go and stand there, boy, till you are wanted.' ^There' being the window, I crossed to it, and stood 'there,' in a very uncomfortable state of mind, looking out. It opened to the ground, and looked into a most miserable cor- ner of the neglected garden, upon a rank ruin of cabbage-stalks, and one box tree that had been clipped round long ago, like a pudding, and had a new growth at the top of it, out of shape and of 76 GREAT EXPECTATIONS a different colour, as if that part of the pudding had stuck to the saucepan and got burnt. This was my homely thought, as I con- templated the box tree. There had been some light snow, overnight, and it lay nowhere else to my knowledge; but, it had not quite melted from the cold shadow of this bit of garden, and the wind caught it up in little eddies and threw it at the window, as if it pelted me for coming there. I divined that my coming had stopped conversation in the room, and that its other occupants were looking at me. I could see nothing of the room except the shining of the fire in the window glass, but I stiffened in all my joints with the consciousness that I was under close inspection. There were three ladies in the room and one gentleman. Before I had been standing at the window five minutes, they somehow conveyed to me that they were all toadies and humbugs, but that each of them pretended not to know that the others were toadies and humbugs: because the admission that he or she did know it, would have made him or her out to be a toady and humbug. They all had a listless and dreary air of waiting somebody's pleasure, and the most talkative of the ladies had to speak quite rigidly to suppress a yawn. This lady, whose name was Camilla, very much reminded me of my sister, with the difference that she was older, and (as I found when I caught sight of her) of a blunter cast of features. Indeed, when I knew her better I began to think it was a Mercy she had any features at all, so very blank and high was the dead wall of her face. Toor dear soul!' said this lady, with an abruptness of manner quite my sister's. 'Nobody's enemy but his own!' 'It would be much more commendable to be somebody else's enemy,' said the gentleman; 'far more natural.' 'Cousin Raymond,' observed another lady, 'we are to love our neighbour.' 'Sarah Pocket,' returned Cousin Raymond, 'if a man is not his own neighbour, who is?' Miss Pocket laughed, and Camilla laughed and said (checking a yawn), 'The idea!' But I thought they seemed to think it rather a good idea too. The other lady, who had not spoken yet,